1. Technical Field of the Invention
The disclosure relates to a computer system and a boot method thereof, and more particularly to a computer system, supporting a preboot execution environment (PXE), and a boot method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Because the network transmission speed nowadays is getting higher, networks are employed to support the installation of operating systems of computer systems (e.g. desktop computers, notebooks and network computers) and support acquiring data, which is required by computer systems, from remote servers.
Generally, connecting to remote servers through networks is based on a preboot execution environment (PXE) technology. The PXE technology not only can acquire data from a remote server to support the booting of a computer system but also can install an operating system and application programs into the computer system via the remote server. More particularly, in order to carry out the above remote operation, the preboot execution environment is written into a flash memory in a network card (or called as network interface card or network interface controller.
Before the computer system installs its operating system via the network card supporting the preboot execution environment, users have to set the network card supporting the preboot execution environment to be the first boot option (Boot Option #1) having the first priority in a boot menu 20 shown in FIG. 1A. FIG. 1A is a schematic view of a boot menu before a conventional host device is installed with an operating system. The priorities of the first boot option (Boot Option #1), a second boot option (Boot Option #2) and a third boot option (Boot Option #3) are sorted from high to low. In FIG. 1A, the boot menu 20 is in an interface of a basic input output system (BIOS) and shows the model of the network card as “IBA XE Slot 0400 v2196” and a block 30 which provides users with footnotes of function keys.
In order to prevent the computer system from repeating the installation of its operation, after the operating system is installed into the network card supporting the preboot execution environment, the users still have to set a hard disk drive (HDD), which the operating system is installed into, to be a new first boot option in the boot menu 20 so that the computer system can enter into this installed operating system, as shown in FIG. 1B. FIG. 1B is a schematic view of the boot menu after the conventional host device is installed with an operating system.
However, during the installation of the operating system of the conventional computer system, the priority of every boot option in the boot menu 20 has to be edited many times, and when the boot of the network card supporting the preboot execution environment fails, other hardware peripheral (e.g. the HDD indicated by the second boot option or the USB indicated by the third boot option) listed in the boot menu 20 in FIG. 1A will be booted. Moreover, if there are many remote servers and the computer system attempts to install its operating system via the network card supporting the preboot execution environment, information about all of the hardware peripherals in the computer system will not be known accurately in real time because the network card randomly chooses one of the remote servers to install the operating system.